Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993                   TAG: 9312190102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DICK POLMAN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Long

AT A FORK IN ROAD TO PEACE SINN FEIN HOLDS IRELAND'S FUTURE IN ITS HANDS

Abandoning decades of British policy, he - along with his Irish counterpart, Albert Reynolds - signed a declaration saying that "it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone . . . to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish." Furthermore, the British, who have always vowed never to "talk with terrorists," pledged to sit down with the Irish Republican Army if the IRA would renounce violence for three months.

Why the switch? The annual cost to British taxpayers of running Ulster is $11 billion and rising, but Major, in a rare TV address the other night, said simply, "We cannot go on spilling blood in the name of the past."

Now comes the hard part.

This weekend, the weary peoples of Britain and Ireland await a detailed response from Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. It could be days or weeks. Only then, perhaps, will it be clear whether peace is at hand - or whether a new generation will be sucked into the conflict. The tension is almost palpable here. The future is stalled at a fork in the road.

"My optimism is guarded," said Jack Wier, a Northern Ireland church official who has contacts with the IRA. "I think perhaps some [IRA members] are ready to renounce violence. Others, I think, will find it very difficult. Violence is addictive. . . . Once you start it, it's sometimes very difficult to give up."

The IRA's political leaders, notably Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, seem willing to compromise on their traditional demand for a British military withdrawal and unification with the Irish Republic. In a speech last February, voicing a preference for democracy over violence, Adams suggested that unity should come not by force, but with "Northern majority consent."

This is echoed in the new declaration. Unification must be achieved with "the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland."

Today, 59 percent are Protestant and staunchly pro-British, but that majority may shrink and ultimately disappear because Catholic birth rates are higher. The pact makes it clear that London would honor a future shift in sentiment, and a non-violent Sinn Fein would be free to pursue its dream at the ballot box.

In the short run, Sinn Fein would be invited to join talks on the future political makeup of the province. At present, Ulster is ruled directly from London. Nobody is happy with that arrangement, imposed in 1972. But Sinn Fein might accept an Ulster-based government that allows Catholics to share local power with Protestants.

Many Ulster Catholics would take such a deal, even though it falls short of Irish unification. Paul O'Connor, who works in a Londonderry bookstore, said, "There's a fatigue factor in everybody, and a desire to move on to new things. A republican said to me recently, about the [Ulster] cops, `One day we'll have to accept that we make love on the same streets as those guys.' "

He spoke of a widespread hunger, even among Britain's fiercest critics, for substantive peace talks: "When the bloodletting is done, you can actually feel quite anxious to sit down with your opposites. I don't want a Catholic nationalist Ireland. We just can't afford to be governed any longer by the gray suits in London, because they don't give a damn about us."

Father Matt Wallace, a working-class priest in Belfast, said that his people would also take half a loaf. "This is the first time we've had such a major initiative from two heads of government," he said. "We will accept it - some reluctantly, most joyously. The young, in particular. They were born into this, and now they're getting married, and they don't want to see the same situation again for their children."

But why should the IRA take up the British offer of unification-by-consent? Catholics won't outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for another 50 years, perhaps longer, and there's no guarantee that this new majority would vote for unification.

As Ian Shuttleworth, a lecturer in geography at Queen's University in Belfast pointed out, only 32 percent of Ulster Catholics favored a united Ireland in a recent national poll. He said, "We should avoid this crude sectarian arithmetic. It's not as simple as that."

But the Protestant paramilitaries aren't likely to be mollified by polls. Put simply, they are attuned to any hint of British betrayal. "Loyalist" gunmen were convinced, long before the Anglo-Irish pact, that Britain was looking for ways to dump Ulster. If the IRA buys into the pact, the paramilitaries, sensing their own isolation, might step up their attacks against innocent Catholics - thereby threatening the peace process.

Members of the Protestant middle class don't condone violence, but they now share the frustrations of the gunmen who lash out on their behalf.

"It's Sinn Fein and the IRA that are holding court," said Ronnie Fergusen, a salesman who lives in a Belfast suburb. "That's why loyalist attitudes are hardening. We've kept to the democratic method and the ballot box. So why do the men of violence seem to be cutting the pace? I'd say to John Major, if you want a solution here, why not ask someone like me first, before you go running off to Albert Reynolds?"

At best, this fledgling peace process has only reached the end of the beginning. Big imponderables remain. How, and when, would a compliant IRA forfeit its weapons? How would the British know that all weapons were turned in? Or, as David Wilshire, a hard-line member of Parliament, put it, "How on earth can we take the word of psychopathic killers?"

And if the IRA ultimately opts for half a loaf, some members could break ranks and perpetuate the war. With this in mind, Peter Bottomley, a member of Parliament and a former Northern Ireland minister, said, "We've got to be very brave and resilient. If we're too optimistic, then any one bomb or murder in London or Belfast can bowl us over."

Indeed, the battle-hardened citizens of Ulster are wise to the high cost of dreams. As Paul O'Connor put it, "The situation could still get worse. There's a bloodletting that still has to happen. If you try to achieve progress, there is going to be more death. There is always a price to pay."